Enter the first trial

“We’re going in.”

“Like hell we are!” shouts Lia, at you this time instead of the floor. “Every second we waste here is another second some hobo could be stealing all my stuff!” She takes a few steps toward you. You feel Blythe try to move around to get between you, but you put up your arm to stop her. Lia grabs the neck of your doublet and glares at you. In response, you place your hands on her shoulders and meet her glare in silence. She deserves to be angry, you think. We all do. The sooner she gets this out, the better.

As you expect, her anger slowly gives way to tears as she accepts the reality that you’re all stuck here until you complete these “trials.” Her grip on your doublet loosens, and you pull her into your chest. While you hold her with one hand, the other lightly pets the back of her head between her cat-like ears. Blythe joins you in comforting the crying woman. You all stand in that dimly illuminated room for several minutes, the only sounds those of Lia’s muffled sobs.

Once her tears begin to subside, you say, “We’re going to get through this. I want to get through as quickly as possible, but we can’t afford to rush anything. There’s no telling what kind of stuff we’ll face in these ‘Trials.’ Our priority has to be making it out alive, understand?” Lia nods, rubbing her face against your chest in the process. Sometime during the crying, her hands moved from the neck of your doublet to around your back. Those hands now slip away as she steps back, takes a deep breath, and raises her head up with a renewed look of determination.

Without another word, Lia approaches the glowing door. Instead of opening it, however, she completely vanishes the instant she touches the knob. You look to Blythe, who is just as confused as you are. Given a moment to ponder, she comes up with a theory.

“It must be a spell used to teleport challengers into the trials,” says Blythe. She looks to you and nods before approaching the door. Exactly like Lia, your elf companion blinks out of existence as soon as she touches the doorknob.

Your feet automatically carry you up to the door. The glowing runes etched on the door mean nothing to you, but from close up they appear to vibrate in place slowly. Well, guess it’s my turn, you think. You reach for the knob, just tapping it with your forefinger when everything around you changes. The world falls away, becoming an infinite void of dull, shifting colors. Your feet feel as if they’re standing on solid ground the entire time, which when combined with the kaleidescope void surrounding you makes you feel sick. Then, it’s gone, and you’re standing in what appears to be a six-foot wide dungeon corridor. Your only source of light is a lit torch directly in front of you, being held by a hooded figure covered from head to toe in a navy blue cloak.

“The First Trial,” says the figure, “is one of the mind.” Their voice is warm, if also matter-of-fact. Feminine, if you had to guess. “You stand within Hesperos’s Labyrinth. Find your way to the center to complete the trial.” The cloaked figure moves over to a wall and places the lit torch in a sconce. “Do not linger in one place for too long,” they say, before stepping back into the shadows and disappearing. You grab the torch off the wall and look around, but the figure has gone. You’re now totally alone in the dark.

…

As you walk through the dark corridor, you ponder the situation. _Where are Blythe and Lia? We all entered the Trials the same way. Did going in separately make us spawn in different parts of the labyrinth? Or are they in a totally different place? No, no, I have to believe they’re here, and I have to find them. _You use the torch to leave burn marks on the left wall as you go. If I do this, I’ll be able to know where I’ve been. If I leave them all on the left side, I’ll even know which direction I’m going.

It takes several minutes of walking before you find a fork in the corridor. The path to your left looks to be a short one with another fork about a minute’s walk down the way. The only reason you can tell how short it is is due to a torch on the wall at the end of the corridor, burning with blue fire as opposed to the natural yellow flames of your own torch. Meanwhile, the path continuing forward stretches as far as your torchlight can reach, with no lights further on to reveal what might be that way.

If this is a labyrinth, and my goal is the center, you think, then it would make sense for me to start on the outside, right? I need to turn inward to make progress.

You take the left path, approaching the next fork marked by the blue torch. New paths branch out to your left and right, neither of which have any sort of markers to differentiate them with. Before, I at least had this torch as some kind of hint. I guess this is where the real maze starts. You take the left path, determined to stick to the time-honored strategy of hugging one wall the entire time. Leaving burn marks as you go, you make your way through endless corridors with only the sound of the torch’s flame echoing off of the stone brick walls.

After what feels like hours, you come to the conclusion that you’ve now marked every wall you have access to. Meaning, you’ve been everywhere you can go. You know your strategy works, so the logical conclusion is that there’s some kind of trick going on. Maybe a puzzle that you have to solve in order to open up more of the labyrinth. “The First Trial is one of the mind,” is what they said. It makes sense that this wouldn’t be an ordinary maze. Donning your puzzle-solving hat, you make your way back to the only clue you have.